You can work really hard on dropping your bad habits, those activities and behaviors you engage in that have more negative consequences than positive benefits…
My friend on the other side of the world, Harley M. Storey, the Life Coach Toolman, is offering my network a set of 20 Life Coaching Tools for free!
These are great if you are a coach, or any person interested in living a great life.
Get your download today!
You always have a choice in any given moment.
It is a choice of how to focus. What to give your attention to. Your attention is the most valuable and powerful asset you have. Your attention has the power to change your world, and change THE world.
I’ve been considering gratitude a lot lately. I never used to think much about it. When we are a certain way we don’t give it much of a thought. Now I notice it now and appreciate it. I really notice when someone is lacking in gratitude. Don Draper, the main character in the hit series Mad Men could be the poster boy for the absence of gratitude. He Is portrayed as one of the luckiest men on Madison Ave. yet he never acknowledges his good fortune. Lack of gratitude can make your life much emptier and unhappy. Read more
OK, it happened again.
A client, struggling to find a job for months (years, really), did this one weird thing, and had 3 interviews within 1 week, and a dream job within 2 weeks. Read more
Typical scenario: We perform below our expectations of ourselves.
Standard reaction: We don’t like that. It upsets us. We set a new expectation to do better next time.
Usual outcome: Our performance stays the sames or gets “worse”.
Sound familiar? Our standard reaction to behavior that is less than optimal is to encounter the behavior with negative energy, thinking (if we think at all), that our disapproval will get us better results next time.
How well has that approach worked for you?
Try this: Meet all your thoughts, feelings, actions and “results” with approval.
If you can’t bring yourself to do that, hire a coach and find out what it means to be unconditionally friendly with yourself, and how it can transform your whole life.
What is Laughter Coaching?
Why does it work?
How can you apply it to your life?
How can you bring more laughter, levity and energy shifts into your coaching?
Find out in this recording of my interview with Mary Rives of www.laughterinc.com !
[mc id=”147″ type=”audio”]My_Life_Coach_Laughter_Coaching[/mc]
OK, so, it can end up being a little self-defeating to always be “working on yourself.”
There really is nothing wrong with you, you are perfect just the way you are! A constant quest for self-development and/or enlightenment can actually get in the way of your growth.
So, if you are feeling a bit “stuck” why not try one of these backdoor methods? I’ll expand more about why these methods work on my www.CoachMichele.com blog.
All you really need to know is intending to improve these areas of your life will bring a lot of systems into alignment such that in addition to creating something positive in your life, you’ll also be coming to greater holistic health and development as a human being.
- Strive for a very high level of physical fitness
- Learn to be at absolute peace around your family, immediate and extended
- Rid yourself of your “small” addictions (using food, shopping, entertainment, etc. to modify your mood)
- Truly organize your physical environment
- Double your level of intimacy with your partner
Choosing just one of those items, and making it a focus in your life, will bring lasting benefits to all areas of your life!
Happy Transforming!
Successful Goal Setting
Articles, Blog, Business Coaching, Career Coaching, Coaching, Coaching Techniques, Executive Coaching, Life Coaching, Performance Coaching
March 25, 2011
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As a life and executive coach I do a lot of work with people around their goals. Setting goals puts you in the driver’s seat, giving you the power to transform your life or take a company to another level. Successfully setting and executing goals is not rocket science but there is a tried and true way that works for my clients and me. Sticking to this program guarantees success. It doesn’t matter whether your goals are personal or they are used to direct a large enterprise, the steps and the pitfalls are identical. I’ll take you through a quick tour. If you like, you can identify a goal of yours and do a test run of the system.
The steps to executing goals are simple, unambiguous and easy to follow and should be practiced every day. Skipping one step increases the odds that you won’t realize your goal.
The first step to goal setting is to have absolute belief and faith in the process. If you don’t believe you can absolutely transform your life and get what you want, then you might as well put down your pencil and do something else. If you are in doubt, look around you. Everything you can see began as a thought. If you identify something you really want, you can make it happen if want it badly enough.
Visualize what you want. Think of what you deeply desire in your life or where you want your company to be a year from now. What has to change for that to happen? What transformations need to take place? What do you need to know or learn? What spiritual, emotional, personal, financial, social or physical properties need to be addressed? The clearer you can get with each of these dimensions, brings your vision into sharp focus. The clearer you are about what you want, the easier it will be to focus on making it happen. Write down as many things as you can think about. Not being absolutely clear about your vision will make taking action very difficult.
Get it down! Writing down your goals is key to success. A 1953 Yale study followed 100 students to see how they ended up. Only 3% had written goals. Ten years later, this 3% was happier, more satisfied and had reached the goals they had set out to achieve. More importantly, the net worth of that 3% was greater than the rest of the 97% combined. By writing down your goals, you become a creator. Failure to write down your goals often means you will forget them or won’t focus on them, most likely like that other 97%.
If you have multiple goals, you may need to chunk elements of your vision into individual goals. Having a list of twenty or thirty objectives can be hard to keep track of and even more difficult to focus on. Chunking involves grouping “like” items together. For instance let’s say you have goals around taking your business to the next level. You might chunk your goals into financial, marketing, organizational and so on. It’s easier to focus on a few goals than a list of 20-odd items. Failure to chunk results in failure to focus and loss of direction.
The next step is to identify a purpose for each goal. Knowing why you want to achieve your goals is powerful. Identifying the purpose of your goal will help you instantly recognize why you want that particular goal and whether it’s worth working toward.. Knowing why you want something furnishes motivation to see it through to the finish. After all, if the purpose of earning a million dollars is to put it in the bank to save for a rainy day, you probably won’t be as motivated as if you need it to pay for your child’s cancer treatment. Your purpose says a lot about you as a person and your goals.
The next step of goal setting is to commit to your goals. This might sound obvious to you but it’s a step that has huge consequences when it is taken lightly. Write a few pages about why and how you are committing to each goal; why it’s important to you, what it means to you, why the outcome is necessary and what are you going to do to make it happen. Without strong commitment you aren’t likely to follow through.
Stay focused. By staying focused on your goals, you manifest. You may not know how you’ll reach your goals but when you make a daily practice of focusing on your goals, they become easier to reach. The more you focus, the more people and things will come into your life that help make your goals a reality. Having your goals written down somewhere where you will see them each day is a good idea. Your mind will notice that there is a discrepancy between where you are now and where you want to be which will create pressure. Pressure is motivation to change. If you lose focus you can always bring it back. Without a regular practice of focusing on your goals you will get distracted by something and your goal will disappear.
The next step is to create a plan of action. Being really clear about what you want, knowing your purpose, writing your goals down, committing to them, and staying focused gives you the power of clarity to write down a list of action steps the need to be executed over the year. You may not know all the steps ahead of time but you will know the next steps that take you in that direction. Even if you don’t know how you are going to do something, write it down and when the time comes, you will be surprised at the options that may appear. Having goals without a plan of action is like trying to complete a complex project without a project plan. There is too much going on, it’s too disorganized, you miss deadlines and you don’t have priorities. Eventually you get frustrated and the project/goal fails or collapses under it’s own weight.
To show how committed you are to your goals, think of something you can do right now that will get you moving toward fulfilling your goal. Even if it’s just making a phone call, do it now. You will be surprised how this simple step reinforces all the previous steps and gets you motivated and moving toward what you desire. Why wait? If you are not motivated to so something right now, how are you going to get motivated tomorrow?
To push through when things get tough, you will have to hold yourself accountable unless you bring in outside help like a coach. It makes sense to have someone besides yourself who can provide valuable feedback at critical junctures, like in the visualization stage. Some people tell their friends and family about their goals which gives them the accountability they need to stick to it. Once you start to achieve some success you will find it easier to keep motivated. Consider having a backup plan. What can you do if you get stuck for too long?
Make it part of your day to review your goals and take action. This will keep your goals alive and top of mind. By following these steps and practicing your goals each day, you have all the elements you need to succeed and achieve your goals. It isn’t always easy to push through. Some days will be easier than others but if you keep focused on your goals you will be amazed at the progress you will make. Remember, almost everything begins as a thought. You can be what you imagine if you follow these simple goal-setting rules.
In our group coaching class tonight, we started an interesting discussion about sharing concepts with life coaching clients. If we have an idea about what might be going on, how do we share that without leading or forcing our ideas onto our clients?
The discussion arose out of our topic of Using the Ego to Your Advantage. We talked about ways we could identify when our egos were feeding us some disempowering thoughts, become conscious of that, and find the empowering approaches, because of this consciousness. Very useful in discovering and living truth and love, and freeing ourselves from illusion and suffering.
The question came up, how can we avail our clients of this idea? In real life coaching examples of a client who reacted from ego at a meeting, how might we, as coaches, respond?
Here are some of my thoughts…
- Of course, we are not coaching when we are leading our clients anywhere…If you find yourself tempted to lead, you are already outside of the coaching groove…
- Questions that can illuminate the situation will always lead to more understanding…Consciousness automatically leads to learning
- You’ll be more natural if you are not in the habit of making too many assumptions about what is going on
- Commenting on things you’ve learned in your experience as a coach (or a human) CAN be appropriate…This might sound something like…I’ve observed many times that people sometimes overreact when they feel threatened…Could that be part of what was happening for you? Again, you want this to be a real question, not one that you already “know” the answer you “want” to hear.
- Introducing clients to concepts can be appropriate as well. This can be stated just as such…You putting forth an idea that you are asking your client to consider if it is true for them or could be helpful for them.
Again, as a coach, if you are making assumptions about what a client “needs” to know, you will be getting in the way. Let the client’s wisdom emerge via your non-judgmental, open, curious, present, loving approach.
